


Tomorrow Will Be A Good Day

by Val_Creative



Category: His Dark Materials (TV), His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Blood and Injury, Canon - Book & TV Combination, Cittagazze (His Dark Materials), Episode Related, F/M, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, Hurt Lyra Belacqua, Introspection, Night Terrors, Protective Will Parry, Romantic Friendship, Season/Series 02, Soft Will Parry, Weapons, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-12
Updated: 2020-12-12
Packaged: 2021-03-10 20:36:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,403
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28033266
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Val_Creative/pseuds/Val_Creative
Summary: Will goes out to find canned food. Angelica and the other children terrorize Lyra while he isn't there with her.
Relationships: Lyra Belacqua/Will Parry
Comments: 13
Kudos: 78





	Tomorrow Will Be A Good Day

**Author's Note:**

> OHHHHH. THIS ONE WAS FUN TO DO. I cannot get enough of Lyra and Will and I hope you guys are enjoying whatever I put up. Thank you again to Conner for helping me plot a little bit. Any thoughts/comments are deeply appreciated! 💕💕

*

Will doesn't think today will be good. He woke up to his bandages unraveling and stained red, and to Lyra hollering herself out a nightmare. His priority — of course — had been lurching upstairs woozily to see a furiously scowling Lyra in her bed, scrubbing off the tears.

She's been quiet since then, brooding and jabbing her fork into the omelette Will cooked.

Her dirtied little nails pick at the burnt omelette-edges.

"You alright?" Will murmurs, observing her from across the cafe's table. It's another hot and sun-drenched morning. Sweat trickles down the back of Will's neck peeking from his light blue shirt. He cuts into his own peppery omelette, nibbling.

Lyra grunts.

She begins shredding her omelette, piece by piece, sucking the grease on her fingers but not eating anything on her plate.

"Do you want to talk about it?"

"Not really," Lyra says dully, but there's a hint of contempt in her voice. Her eyes remain unblinking to the table, but Will sees Pantalaimon, as a tawny owl, peer at Will. The daemon lets out a screech-cry by a glass jug of water, puffing up his feathers.

Will frowns, but feels like this isn't worth getting into an argument about.

"We're running low on baked beans," he announces, scooting out his cafe-chair. The thin metal legs screech against the brecciate stone like Pantalaimon had screeched. "It won't take me long to find some. You can clear this up if you want, Lyra."

Lyra doesn't answer him. She doesn't look up or drink from her half cup of water.

Will's lips press together.

"Right…"

*

He's gone in another moment, dampening Lyra's mood further.

Pantalaimon chirrups, turning into a furry red panda. He leaps onto her knees where Lyra's hands reach out to cradle him in her arms. Her breathing tightens. "Will is only trying to help us," Pantalaimon insists, nuzzling against Lyra's collar. "Can't you tell?"

She doesn't doubt Pantalaimon.

Will hauled himself upstairs as soon as he heard her nightmare, pale and bleeding, thinking of Lyra's safety first. Lyra grumbled at Will for fussing, shoving him downstairs and cleaning Will's wounds at the sink, re-bandaging him.

It seems like that was the only nightmare Will heard.

Lyra had several more in the night, finding herself crying breathlessly on her pillow as soon as she woke.

One had been about a memory — Lyra, snarling and her eyes glittering with malice, urging Pantalaimon to attack Marisa Coulter's golden monkey daemon. She watched herself with her mother's expression on Lyra's face. The other had been about Will — Will, gasping for air in front of her — with the Knife lodged deep through his left hand pinned to his chest. Bright blood bubbled out of his lips.

As soon as they were both conscious, a whimpering, ermine-formed Pantalaimon scampered over to lick Lyra's flushed cheeks.

Lyra crawled out of bed and hunched herself exhausted on the mesa stairs. She crossed her arms under her chin, bringing her knees up and watching her _other_ best friend sleep for a while. Even with the distance, Lyra could see Will's brow furrow.

He's brave, and handsome, and kind, and Lyra doesn't know how they found each other… but she's glad for it.

Lyra makes a fist, wrinkling her nose and rubbing sleepily over her eyelid.

"I know Will wants to help us, Pan."

"Then start acting like it," Pantalaimon argues, but sounds good-natured. He's not cross with her. Lyra doesn't think Will is cross either. When she stands, her daemon becomes a rather large and iridescently green housefly, twirling around Lyra's head.

Lyra thinks about what Will said about clearing up. She dumps the jug of water onto the ground, picking up a silver serving tray.

_"THAT'S HER!"_

She whips around.

"Kill! Kill her!" A group of children, forty or fifty of them, marches towards Lyra. They're all shouting and cheering. In their hands, they wield brooms and fishing knives and sticks. Angelica leads with a taller, older boy in front of Paula. "Kill her now!"

"You better leave!"

"Kill!"

"You stole Tullio's knife and you let the Spectres get him!" Angelica screams, her tiny, dark eyes bulging in their sockets.

Lyra feels a slow sense of reassurance as Pantalaimon, as a wolverine, growls towards the murderous children. He rears himself protectively in front of her. One or two of the children drop their sticks out of fright. "We didn't steal it!" Lyra yells towards them. "It belongs to Will! He won the Knife in a fight against your brother, Angelica! He had to fight or be killed!"

"She says she didn'n thieve it!"

"Tullio's dead!"

"Kill her!"

"M'scared! I'm scared!"

They've surrounded her, but not by the entrance-way. Lyra doesn't run, clutching the silver serving tray to herself. Pantalaimon shifts into a rattlesnake, frightening more children, waiting for Lyra's hand lifting him and curling himself snugly to Lyra's neck.

"She's _worse_ th'n the Spectres!"

"Kill her!"

"That's a witch!"

 _"Lyra!"_ Will's voice fades in.

Her mouth twitches instinctively into a smile.

That's when Lyra sees the pistol in the older boy's hand, her eyes widening.

*

Will continues down a familiar boulevard, remembering the jewellery storefronts and the bakeries and grocery marts in this direction.

Alongside them, a row of private, though empty, homes with bead-curtained doorways now dusty and filthy. Wrought iron balconies covered with dying, blackened flowers and towering high above the narrow pavement leading down to a road.

There's still the ashtray Will touched briefly. How many days ago? Has it been longer?

A hush immerses every street-end, fractured by the broken bits of glass under Will's trainers. Even after first coming here, none of it has changed.

Will thinks of the invisible, gossamer-shimmering Spectres and grabs Æsahættr's handle.

Nothing so far.

He shoulders his bookbag full of canned apricot halves, tomatoes and baked beans.

On his way back, navigating around an espresso machine and a zinc-topped bar, Will discovers a pair of roller skates — or what he _assumes_ are roller skates lying in a crate. They're a small metal frame fitted with two leather straps, one at the ankle and the other across the toes, and with wheels beneath. It reminds Will of the really old versions of roller skates back in the 1920s.

(Did other worlds invent roller skates too or did The Guild _steal_ this like it stole everything else?)

Lyra might be interested in this. She's been having a gander through abandoned chest of drawers. Maybe this will get her mind off what's happened for another few days. Will tucks away the roller skates in his bag, leaving a coin out as he did the foodstuffs.

*

The nearer Will gets to the little corner cafe, the more he can hear the yelling.

Children like him and Lyra, gathering together, screaming.

They sound _furious_.

Apprehension grips Will's reasoning. He sprints the rest of the way, Will's hand throbbing painfully.

In the long line of children, Will can see a pinch-faced Lyra by the cafe's table. Angelica stands with a boy Will doesn't recognise, and she stares at Lyra with a kind of dark, menacing arrogance. Paula lingers on Angelica's left, visibly excited.

Nothing about this feels right.

"Lyra!" Will shouts, pushing past two of the children who glower. He tries to nudge past the gathering.

That's when he hears a loud cracking noise.

Like gunfire.

Will's heart plummets.

He can't hear anything right then. The world goes silent. Numbed-out. Will staggers in place, his lips opening.

_"LYRA!"_

Her name flies from Will's throat, breaking his voice apart.

Will barrels through the rest of the children, as they flee into the road or get knocked over by him. Lyra's on the ground, her eyes shut, one of her arms thrown over herself. Pantalaimon has shrunk to a moth, fluttering weakly by Lyra's ear.

"Lyra—Lyra!" Will repeats frantically, dropping to his knees and squeezing on Lyra's upper arm. "No! Lyra! Get up!"

"It's too late for that!" Angelica proclaims, grinning. "I saw it! She's been killed!"

Behind her, Paula shrills out a laugh.

 _Stop,_ Will pleads over and over in his mind. _Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop it._

He can't see any red blood puddling under Lyra's head or around her body. Will holds his fingers against Lyra's neck.

"What have you done…" he mutters, glaring up at Angelica. The boy with the pistol already vanished. Will forces himself to shudder harder. Tears glisten in Will's eyes. "Why did you kill her… _I'm_ the one who took the Knife from your brother…"

Angelica stares gleefully to Will's other hand clutching onto Lyra's side.

"I told you we'd get you."

A fiendish Paula snatches onto Angelica's hand, grinning and dragging her off to the other children. Once they're out of view, Will lets go of Lyra's uninjured side and wipes off his face in a grimacing silence. The tears burn onto Will's cheeks.

He kicks Lyra's serving tray under the table, its silver embedded with the pistol's bullet.

*

"Lyra?"

There's a sensation like pleasant rocking in the darkness. Lyra realises she's being carried.

"Lyra?"

Her head aches something fierce. Pain branches through Lyra's upper right chest, distorting and growing prickly thorns.

"Pan?" she mumbles out. Lyra can feel him burrowing in her canvas trouser's pocket.

"I'm right here, Lyra."

"Don't worry. I've got you," Will tells them, keeping Lyra against him securely as he moves and avoids putting weight on his injured hand still bloodied. There's no way either of them can get upstairs, she reckons. "I'm going to set you down, alright?"

Everything tilts suddenly at a new angle. Lyra forces her eyes open, blinking and seeing Will's reassured face.

"Lyra, can you hear me?"

_"Wh'mm happened?"_

"You scared the life out of me, that's what happened," Will says dryly. He makes sure she's resting upright to Will's goose-feather pillows. "I thought you were shot. When you weren't, I had to make Angelica think you were and that you were dead."

"M'alright," Lyra breathes, shutting her eyes again and opening her arms for a hug. She feels Will lean in, his hands warm.

"Did you hit your head?"

"Mhhm."

"Let me see." He treats her gently, putting a hand on Lyra's nape to help her go forward as Will inspects her head and where Lyra hit it. "I don't see any cuts there. That's good, I think." Will's voice sounds heavy like fog. "Are you dizzy, Lyra?"

"No."

"Do your ears ring at all?"

"No," Lyra says softly, her head throbbing noticeably to her. It helps she's aware.

"Open your eyes, Lyra," Will murmurs, holding the side of her face. As soon as she does, Lyra feels her insides flutter. The tip of Will's nose brushes hers. He's looking into her eyes as if scrutinising them, trying to find something wrong, and Lyra remembers that happening one time she fell out of a tree at Jordan College when she was younger. They worried about Lyra's head.

"Were you studying to be a Physician, Will? In your Oxford?"

A soft snort leaves him.

"Should I?" Will asks, the corners of his mouth uplifting.

"I think you would be brilliant at it…"

When he looks into her eyes again, Lyra thinks Will is looking at _her_ this time.

His hand shifts on Lyra's face, Will's fingers nesting a little in her dark hair. A shiver of heat rises to Lyra's temple where Will's thumb strokes lightly.

She wants him to kiss her, Lyra understands this now. She wants him to kiss her like Lyra used to imagine Dick Orchard kissing her, but she doesn't want to kiss Dick Orchard not ever. She only wants to kiss Will from now on.

But… Will doesn't kiss her. Lyra didn't expect him to. He drops his hand, clearing his throat and smiling wanly.

"I found something you might like."

Will pulls off his bookbag, unzipping it.

"You use them on your feet and you can get around faster," he explains, holding up the dusty roller skates. Lyra frowns perplexed. "Well, sort of… you can't go as fast as a car obviously. But we've got something similiar in my world. I used to play on my neighbor's roller skates when she let me, but I would always trip and fall on the grass. I suppose they were too big for me."

"… They're for me?" Lyra whispers, starting to grin.

"Yeah," Will says, rubbing over his bandage sheepishly. "I dunno… I thought you would wanna try them with me. Sometime. But when you feel better, we can ask the alethiometer where my dad is and we can decide what to do from there."

"That sounds like a good idea."

"You see, Will… Lyra rarely ever has them," Pantalaimon comments.

She narrows her eyes at her mischievous daemon, but laughs along with him and Will.

Her palm goes to her rib-cage as Lyra flinches, and Will notices, asking to see. She lifts her multicolored linen shirt, discovering a gigantic, purpling bruise forming. "Looks like where it bounced off on the silver platter," he mutters, "Anything else hurt?"

"No…" Lyra hesitates, biting her lower lip. "Will?"

He kneels back down.

"I'm sorry I didn't help you when we got the alethiometer back, Will."

Her fingers quiver, clutching in her lap without Pantalaimon.

As soon as he senses her distress, Pantalaimon hops into Lyra's hands as a long-tailed harvest mouse.

"I felt so… lost. I wasn't myself and I was _so lost_ , Will. It felt like I didn't have control over what I was doing, y'know? I could only think about hurting Mrs. Coulter like she hurt me, and I shouldn't have done that. I should have been helping you, Will."

Will's expression softens.

"You don't have to be sorry," he declares. "She wasn't there for a good reason if she was working with Charles Latrom."

_"But—"_

"You're not your mother. You are Lyra Silvertongue."

Hearing Will speak her name — her _true_ name — with purpose and assurance has Lyra's stomach twisty. But in a good way.

"You're the best person I know."

Tears moisten Lyra's eyes. She ignores them, listening in on Pantalaimon addressing Will about new windows.

By the end of tomorrow, Lyra's mood brightens. Will straps the roller skates on her feet, having Lyra grasp his uninjured hand and then his bandaged wrist, leading her to a flatter, smoother road. She lets Will pull her around, giggling and clinging on.

It's a good day.

*


End file.
